Prologue: in the field -- Field notes. "Green revolutions": hunting turkey wheat -- Pt. 1. Collection: the political culture of seeds -- The museum of seeds -- Seed sharing in the Patent Office -- Failures of tea cultivation in the American South -- Field notes. "Local knowledge": what the pastoralist knew -- Pt. 2. Migration: wheat culture and immigrant agricultural knowledge -- For amber waves of grain -- Spacious skies and economies of scale -- Field notes. "Indigenous knowledge": diversity and endangerment -- Pt. 3. Preservation: indigenous plants and the preservation of biocultural diversity -- Elk's weed on the prairie -- The allegory of the cave in Kentucky -- Writing on the seed -- Epilogue: in the gene bank.
Summary:
Organized into three thematic parts, The Profit of the Earth is a narrative history of the collection, circulation, and preservation of seeds. Fullilove begins with the political economy of agricultural improvement, recovering the efforts of the US Patent Office and the nascent US Department of Agriculture to import seeds and cuttings for free distribution to American farmers. She then turns to immigrant agricultural knowledge, exploring how public and private institutions attempting to boost midwestern wheat yields drew on the resources of willing and unwilling settlers. Last, she explores the impact of these cereal monocultures on biocultural diversity, chronicling a fin-de-siecle Ohio pharmacist́s attempt to source Purple Coneflower from the diminishing prairie. Through these captivating narratives of improvisation, appropriation, and loss, Fullilove explores contradictions between ideologies of property rights and common use that persist in national and international development - ultimately challenging readers to rethink fantasies of global agriculturés past and future.--AMAZON.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.